


Necessity

by celluloid



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:20:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celluloid/pseuds/celluloid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mission goes wrong, resulting in McCoy being trapped with the enemy closing in. Kirk deals with the fallout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necessity

**Author's Note:**

> Written back in June 2009 for the Star Trek kink meme.

It’s a clusterfuck of sounds that reach his senses, and nothing else aside from a few spots of bright lights; whether or not the lights are actually there or he’s just staring at the insides of his eyelids, he has no idea. The sounds are real enough though; too real, too physical as he can feel the world shake around him, can feel the heat radiating off of whatever. There are explosions (of course, in a situation like this there are always explosions) and he can hear the hiss of steam from somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, wherever, does it even matter at this point? He can see things, a dull, dim green lighting allowing him to see an outline now, rather than the few tiny, too tiny, bright spots, and his mind at this point is scrambling to get away from the darkness, but it’s some fucking sewer or subway or some goddamn useless underground invention that should be completely out of date by now. And it is completely out of date. That’s why he’s down here in the first place. They. That’s why they are.

It’s disgusting and repugnant and god only knows how many diseases are festering in the dank and humid area. He’s wet all over, but the water – which half of him is lying in, thank you very much, it’s shallow and he tries to not even let his mind go to the knowledge that there must be thousands upon thousands of illness-ridden insects who call this shithole their home that are now gravitating towards him, but of course his mind’s already gone there, so telling himself to stop thinking about it is not going to do any good, and he’s able to recognize the beginning stages of a full-on panic setting in.

He tries to hold on but can’t, there isn’t anything to hold on to, it’s too slippery and muddy and he reaches out, tries to grab on to the rocks that make up the edge of the pathway he had just. fucking. been. on, but they either dissolve in his touch or just crumble off and fall in next to him uselessly, and he can’t pull himself out or up, but he keeps on thrusting his hand, his arm, whatever, forward, trying to find something, anything, someone that will help get the job done.

Another hand does grab his, two, actually, and there’s pulling, trying to pry him out of the space he’d gotten himself trapped in to but failing as the world collapses around them, and he’s holding them back but he just knows he needs to get out, dark blue and black clinging far too closely to his skin for any kind of comfort, seeping through, and his feet are soaked and he wonders how much of it is the vile water and how much of it could be his own blood, because he can’t even tell if he’s bleeding at this point, but he can still feel his legs and he can still feel his feet which is how he knows that the worthless fucking boots got themselves completely soaked through, so that’s a good sign, and he may be breathing heavily but part of that is just due to the smog, not him, and the exhilaration, not him, and his heart is racing but that’s only to be expected, that’s normal, and normal is good, isn’t it? This isn’t normal.

His vision remains obscured and he can feel the grime on his face, and he tries to avoid moving his head a lot because if he does then he gets these fucking wet and gross bangs slapping, actually slapping, into his open eyes, eyes he needs to keep open to try to gain a sense of understanding so he can get the fuck out of there. But it’s difficult, and he has to keep on moving it, or else he’ll feel the strain in his neck too much and he’ll just fall face-first into the water again, and he may not be able to drown in it, but jesus he wants out of it so fucking bad. And he wonders what the fuck he was even doing here in the first place, because god fucking damn it, he is a doctor, not a saboteur, and what the fuck does he care about trekking through arcane architecture to dismantle various weapon systems? How in fuck’s name is he even useful in this case?

Oh, right. In case someone gets hurt. Well. What if he’s the one to get fucking hurt, huh, what then? Who’s there to help anyone, then? Who the fuck helps him then? Why is it so automatically and readily assumed that he’s fucking invincible? He isn’t and he’s never claimed to be, unlike some other people he could name, like the ones he thought he was with (but he isn’t too sure anymore because the smell is fucking overwhelming), so why is it that some deity out there sees it fit to prove this lack of invincibility on him, as an example to anyone and everyone else? The fuck did he do to deserve that?

He tries to push out with his legs, to get the fuck away, to push himself up and get out of this water if you could even call it that so they could get. fucking. moving, but it isn’t working, and nothing he does works anymore, and he feels like he would give just about anything to be clean and safe and warm and fucking clean, seriously, and for once he actually wants to be up in space, he’s finally found a place worse than it, but he isn’t getting what he wants because the universe hates him or something.

He hears voices around him, two of them, one yelling and doing nothing for his headache alongside all of the other obnoxiously loud noises going on around them, and christ, are they just dropping a shitload of bombs out there for no apparent reason other than explosions explosions explosions out there, or what? The other voice is stronger, less frantic, but still frantic, he can hear it in the undertones and if he really gave a shit anymore he’d take pleasure in that fact, but he doesn’t, because he knows he’s costing them, and the calmer voice is trying to figure something, anything, some kind of way out of this, but he can’t focus on the voices.

He can’t focus on the voices and what they’re specifically saying (they’re just added to the backdrop of noise and jesus fucking christ what a fucking backdrop) because he’s kind of being overwhelmed with the rather painful sensation that followed immediately after the roof of the tunnel had collapsed on them, and oh, yeah, by the way, maybe the soft rocks just got dust in their lungs and maybe someone got a concussion from it, who knows, but they aren’t enough to incapacitate them. No, what is enough to do that particular job is the shit above the tunnels, this pointlessly intricate maze of sewers and old rusted tracks, the fucking metal beams and walkways that have gone unused for centuries, no, what those things do is they see their basement neighbours, they see them falling down and decide that hey, it’s a party, it looks like they’re having fun, let’s all just join right fucking in, because if your best friend jumps off a cliff then fuck you if you don’t follow him.

So yeah, he’s kind of being trapped and crushed here. There are bars made out of some impossible metal substance pinning down his entire right side, the side immersed in the water that’s going to fucking kill him with all of its dirtiness and disease if nothing else does (so he doubts that it’s really going to get the chance), and horizontally spread across his back is some absurdly heavy remnant of something that was designed for man to walk on top of it, not for it to rest itself comfortably on top of man and pin them there to their deaths while it’s at it. Oh, yeah, and his left leg has been run through by some falling metal spike of some kind, he suspects that it was once for decoration along one of these stupid fucking walkways that nobody can get across anymore, the acceleration due to gravity having done a pretty excellent job of giving it the force it needed to impale the leg and dig even further into the soft rock that makes up (why the hell is it that when the entire world is falling on top of him, the one thing that remains intact is soft fucking rock?) the pathway he and the other two had been running on, so yeah, if he wants to keep that leg, well, that’s just too fucking bad, too.

He knows that he’s stuck because while one of his companions may have superior strength compared to just about every other fucking thing else he knows, it isn’t enough to lift whatever the hell it is pinning his back down and rendering his entire body, not just his legs and right side, useless, because he’s heard him try and nothing works.

And oh, yeah, the air is fucking fogged because if every other aspect of this area is murky and gross as shit, then why should the fucking air be any different? They’re pretty deep underground anyway and jesus fucking christ how much fucking smoke is there? They can’t talk to anybody, they can’t contact anybody up above, high, high above, where things are clean and white and pristine and glowing and fucking heavenly, and there’s no way to get him or them out from under all of this, and if they’re going to escape then they need to get a fucking move on right fucking now.

In fact, it’s just when he’s able to open his eyes properly and see, finally, the pleasant peach tones and peach-green tones and sharp, bright blue and a shockingly warm brown staring down at him, that that’s when he – no, all three of them – hear the sounds of additional shouting, of pounding footsteps, and they all know that they’re coming, they’re coming, and they’re fucked fucked fucked fucked fucked fucked. 

And he wonders to himself, gritting his teeth through all of this ridiculous fucking pain, what exactly the point of this was, because it was to get in there unnoticed, and fuck up their weapons systems because they were planning an attack and with shitty or no weapons at all then they wouldn’t be able to carry it out, and this way no lives would be lost, and no one would be hurt, except, oh yeah, for him, and the other two he notes as he sees red and green fall into the water at their own feet, he knows their own boots are soaked through and that they’re going to get infected with some kind of nasty shit if they keep standing in this liquid. And then in order for it to work properly it would have to be done quietly and secretly and nobody outside of them and their ship could really know about it and then they’d have to get the fuck out of there without, what’s it, without being caught.

He can see the lips moving, can see the stress and worry and fear fear fear on the face as he sees it, Bones, Bones, we’re going to get you out of here, don’t worry about it, everything’s going to be just fine, and he laughs because he knows that isn’t true and he knows that he knows that that isn’t true and the third party doesn’t even bother to say anything because he knows as well, so he just laughs at this, because there isn’t anything else for him to fucking do.

And stop it, he’s told, stop laughing because nothing’s going to happen, we’re going to make it, and he cuts off the frantic rambling speech with his own earlier thoughts about maintaining discretion and not. getting. caught and the importance of it all, his voice snapping out there and he’s pleased to hear that his tone hasn’t changed a bit, though maybe his ears are just fucked up, who can really tell at this point? But no, the idea behind it was to do it, prevent a war or attack or whatever it was they were supposed to be preventing, and then get out of there, because if they’re caught then the damage they did can be easily reversed and more damage can come as a result.

He yells out, that no, no, he isn’t going to make it, and he knows it, and shut the fuck up, because physically, yeah, he could actually still sustain life for quite some time. His body is trapped and injured, but not broken and defeated. No, he isn’t dying, but they aren’t able to get him out of there fast enough, with or without damage, because the sounds of the enemy are massive and getting louder and the enemy themselves are massive and ferocious and will stop at nothing to get what they want. 

Torture is condemned, and shut the hell up, you don’t think I know that? he shouts back out, spitting those words back in the young man’s face (and some blood to go with them). But look at me now, already, I won’t be able to withstand much more, if anything at all, they could probably ask me one fucking question, tell me that all I have to do is answer it and then they’ll kill me, and I’d just answer it with no hesitations, I’m done. Because you know they wouldn’t go that lightly, it’s a game, they would fucking flay me, chop off an ear or rip out an eye, dislocate my shoulders and have me hanging naked being bombarded by radiation without letting me sleep at any point and just letting the maggots come to eat off my dead skin while I’m still alive, and you know they’re going to do more than that, and you know there’s no way I’d be able to stand up to that, even if I was in perfect condition, could you even stand up to that shit? It’s not going to fucking work, this is it.

This is it.

There’s no sudden clarity with an acceptance of death, though; nothing becomes serene or manageable and it’s not like just giving up, because he doesn’t want to, but now he has to beg for it, beg, because if he doesn’t beg then it’s never going to happen, and he hates himself for condemning his friend to this but there isn’t any other way. So he shouts out, if you loved me, if you ever loved me, you would kill me, now, it would be merciful, just remember that, I want you to do this, I need you to do this, it would be mercy and it would save so many and you need to do it now now now you two need to get the fuck out of here, go, leave me behind, there’s nothing you can do, I can’t blame you, I won’t, you can’t blame yourselves, it couldn’t be helped, what the fuck are you waiting for, do it do it do it shoot me shoot me now now now quit stalling and just

-

Sheer adrenaline and will of force had kept his legs pumping. It had kept him running, maintaining pace, breaking free of the underground and getting to a clear area where the atmosphere provided no interference and they were able to escape. Jim saw the chaos surrounding him, and gave a rueful smile towards it; the work he, and Spock, and Bones, had been able to accomplish. His last sight of the planet was of everything falling over itself, havoc being wrecked, and then he and Spock materialized in the peace of the transporter room.

Jim didn’t miss a beat, increasing his strides immediately and not stopping to talk to anyone, arriving at the bridge almost instantaneously, Spock and Scotty following up right behind him. 

“I want all of our weapons trained on the planet,” Kirk orders, his voice carrying a tone of harshness nobody has ever heard from him before, “at full power, and I want them shooting at it until it’s nothing more than a few chunks of rock floating out in deep space.” His eyes are hot with rage, his fists clenched dangerously at his sides, vein clearly visibly throbbing in his forehead. 

There’s hesitation and Jim snarls, the noise animalistic, spitting out, “Well, what the fuck are you waiting for?! That’s a direct fucking order!”

“Captain,” an even voice speaks from behind him, “our direct orders were to beam down to the planet, dismantle its weapons systems, and then to return to the ship, from where we would flee to a starbase and then meet up with other ships of the Federation to plan our next move. We are not to destroy any planets.”

“Fine fucking job we did of that!” Jim whirls around on Spock. “Disregard the original mission. It became irrelevant the second the tunnels collapsed in on us. Hit that miserable ball of rock with everything we have; I want this to be the biggest goddamn explosion of my life.”

“Don’t,” Spock says upon seeing the crew start to respond to the captain’s orders.

This does nothing to improve on Jim’s mood. “What the hell!” he shouts, spittle flying into Spock’s face, which the Vulcan simply blinks at. “You were there, Spock! You were right there! You saw that—They. Killed. Bones!” his voice rises with every word, and he doesn’t even register the shocked gasps emanating from parts of the bridge. “You saw what happened! I am not going to stand by and let them continue existing when—“

“Jim,” Spock says, softly, placing his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Please. I am… upset by this, as well, but I cannot allow you to exact your own personal revenge on an entire planet.” He removes his hand and has to force his voice to be more collected. “I do not wish to force you to invoke Starfleet Regulation 619, but if I must—“

Jim turns away at this, and sees the wide, fearful eyes of some of the bridge’s crew, all looking at him. He feels the energy drain out of his body, and his shoulders slump in defeat. “Take control for now, Mr. Spock,” he says quietly, after some moments of personal silence, interrupted only by the incessant, mystical beeping of the equipment around him, and slowly walks to the turbo lift, and from there, to Bones’ quarters.

-

Jim lies down on his best friend’s bed, having stripped himself of his dirty uniform and leaving the muddied garments on the floor. They can be cleaned later, but it’s so far from important right now and so close to trivial that he really just doesn’t give a shit, even though he’s sure that Bones would have quite a few words to say about leaving such disease-ridden articles on his floor.

He tries to smile at this thought but can’t, because it hits him that he’s never going to hear Bones yelling at him again. So many times he’s gotten shitfaced, and then come back to an irate roommate. Some of those times he’d come back beaten up, and he’d come back to a particularly irate roommate who would then also bitch about how quickly Jim made him go through any medical supplies he actually had. Sure, they weren’t roommates anymore, but before today the possibility of returning to those ways had always still existed, however unlikely it was. Now… there was no chance. Those mornings would never come back. 

Who was he going to go to, now, whenever he’d run out recklessly on a mission, get himself stupidly hurt trying to save another crew member or some child or native inhabitant or whatever, to get patched up, all the while being chastised for acting like an idiot and could he please just give this simple country doctor a break every now and then? And he’d give the simple country doctor a cheeky smile, and tell him that he knew he liked it, and then he’d be stabbed in the neck with yet another hypo.

So, this meant no more hypo stabbings, either. Ever again. Ever.

Jim’s stomach lurches and he feels like throwing up, but he won’t let himself. Not in Bones’ quarters. Or… well. They weren’t really Bones’ anymore, were they? How long is one supposed to wait before they stop referring to their friend in the present tense, anyway? Should he be saying that Bones is his best friend, or that Bones was his best friend? Can his best friend be dead and still be his best friend? Jim doesn’t know; he never thought he’d have to know; he’d never really wanted to know and now he’s stuck on the semantics.

Never, ever, ever, did he see such a thing coming. Never would he have predicted… He’d chosen a small landing party to dismantle the weapons, figuring that they would be less likely to attract any unwanted attention that way. And he’d figured, why mess with success?, and chosen himself to go down alongside First Officer Spock and Dr. McCoy, because they were the three who usually beamed down and they were the three who always made it back up. Until one of them didn’t.

But of all—the doctor? Jim can’t help but dwell on that. It was the healer who died violently, pointlessly? He’s a solider, Spock’s a soldier, Bones is a doctor. The doctors aren’t the ones that are supposed to die. It’s the soldiers. The frontrunners. He’s a frontrunner. He should have been dead long before Bones.

But then, Jim muses, then he’d be the one dead and Bones would be in his position, lying in an empty state in Jim’s quarters, digging himself into a well of inconsolable depression. And he would never wish that on anyone, least of all Bones. 

Really, it would just be better if neither of them had to deal with the situation, ever. If it has to be in action then let them die together. If they can get away from that, then let them die together in old age as lifelong friends, two people who always appreciated the other’s company for decades.

Neither option is possible now. Jim doesn’t get his death wish.

He pulls Bones’ sheets up around him, feeling cold and feeling colder when it dawns on him that the blankets will never have their owner’s warmth on them ever again. That they’re worthless now. They can’t do their job anymore. What’s the point of keeping them.

Sometimes he would lose a member of a landing party, and most of the time, he would blame himself for it. And Bones would come get him at the first possible moment, tell him to snap out of it, and then they’d get drunk together. Jim doesn’t know who’s going to give him the alcohol this time. He doesn’t know who to go to for a lecture and then a sympathetic, warm, comforting, drunken hug. Bones was always the one that came to him and worked to help him get over it. What is he supposed to do when Bones is the victim this time? When Bones is the one he’s mourning?

He locks the door, does everything in his power to ensure that nobody will be able to open it and get in. He’s exhausted but he can’t fall asleep and he squirms uncomfortably in Bones’ bed before giving up and sitting up. He looks at his sullied uniform, sitting there in a damp, gross pile, and he wants to burn it. He’s going to first chance he gets, too. But he can’t stay in Bones’ room any longer, and he needs to go back down to the bridge, to do something, even if it’s just to make sure that they’re on track to the nearest starbase. But he can’t very well go down naked.

-

When Jim enters the bridge again he’s dressed in science blues. People turn their heads to see who it is arriving as the turbo lift’s doors open, and they regard him, but nobody says anything and they go back to their stations. Jim takes a few hesitant steps forward, and comes to a stop behind the captain’s chair, resting his hand on its back.

Spock senses his presence and rises from Jim’s chair, muttering something about going to meditate, and then he’s gone. Jim watches him go, dully, and after standing there for several minutes, he takes his seat and stares out across the expanse of stars. They’re hypnotic.

What he can’t get over is the fact that Bones asked Jim to kill him. He asked, he begged, and then he demanded. Jim always figured that the only life he’d ever destroy would have been his own, not… When he first met Bones on the shuttle in Iowa, and quickly befriended him after getting thrown up upon, not once did it possibly cross his mind that maybe, just maybe, could it be possible in any way, shape, or form, that Bones would die. His first real friend, the first person he shared any kind of connection with, and… Not just die, but die because of him. That he would one day have to kill him.

Jim knows that it isn’t his fault. He knows this. He knows that had the situation been any different, fixable, in any way, then he never would have hurt Bones. He would have gotten him out of there and they would have escaped together and then they could take beds in the sickbay next to one another’s, and Bones would bitch about how Jim gets him into all of this shit, and Jim would just laugh and tell Bones that he knows he loves it, except Bones can’t love anything anymore.

He knows that it’s not his fault, but at the same time, it is. He knows that some of Bones’ last words to him (alongside all of those orders to murder him) told him rather explicitly to not blame himself, but he can’t help it, because he did pull the trigger. He did hit Bones when his phaser was set to kill. He did leave Bones there, adding to his multitude of injuries a gaping, irreparable hole. 

He knows that there was nothing else he could have done, but he also knows that he left his best friend’s body there, and he doesn’t know what’s happening to it. His friend will never get a burial. His body is most likely not going to be treated with any dignity whatsoever. He left the body there, and even if it’s now just a soulless, empty vessel, it was still Bones. He’d already killed one part of his friend… now he’s just shed himself of the other. Jim closes his eyes and all he can see is that broken, battered, bruised, bleeding and abandoned body of his closest friend.

“Mr. Sulu, you have the conn,” he says, standing up to leave again.


End file.
